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Depression and Traumatic Brain Injuries: October 4, 2015
Are you struggling with depression as a result of a traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Do you feel as if you are emotionally drowning, as if your existence is meaningless? Or maybe you don’t have a TBI, but also feel saturated with hopelessness. Depression is as real as a broken bone, a slipped disc, a migraine. It is more than feeling blue. Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. It can impact every day life: work, sleep, relationships. About fifty percent of those who have sustained a TBI...
read moreDomestic Violence and Traumatic Brain Injuries
Since October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I thought this would be a perfect time to share with you a societal problem that has been largely ignored. Not only do war veterans, football players, and accident survivors sustain traumatic brain injuries, but women who are victims of domestic violence sustain TBIs too. Here’s the tragic truth: Close to five million women in the United States experience domestic-related assaults every year, and the injuries they suffer are mostly to the head, neck, and face. Men experience approximately...
read moreSocial Media and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
How often do you view social media sites? Two, three, five times a day? Do you have nightmares after viewing clips of school shootings or movie theatre bombings? Do you feel chronically uneasy, irritable, hyper-vigilant after watching unfettered displays of violence? If this is the case, you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Yes, viewing violent news events on social media can cause PTSD. In a recent study conducted by Dr. Ramsden, a researcher at the University of Bradford in the UK, 189 individuals completed...
read moreTaking The Car Keys Away From My Father
I’m over-the-moon excited to announce that my essay, “Reaching for the Keys,” has been published in Saranac Review It’s about my emotional struggle to take the car keys away from my father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. I spent a year and a half working on it – typing, deleting, reflecting, pacing, tearing up drafts and starting over, pulling my hair out, waking up in the night to scratch down notes. Why all the fretting? Though any piece of creative work takes time to craft into a piece of salient...
read moreArt as Advocacy: September 24 -27, 2015
Vermont College of Fine Arts will be holding its inaugural Hi-Residency conference – a cross-disciplinary alumni reunion – from September 24 through September 27. The themes is “Art as Advocacy.” As part of a panel titled “The Personal is the Political,” I will discuss how writers advocate for those who are disabled. Here is the abstract for the panel: The personal is political” has been a rallying cry for decades by various advocacy groups who have used the phrase to call attention to the idea that even...
read moreA Tribute to Oliver Sacks
The following tribute to Oliver Sacks, an eminent neurologist, prolific writer, and quintessential humanist who died from cancer at 82 on August 30, is dedicated to Christy Lyn Bailey, who died from Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) in June 2015. A good friend to many people around the world, she lived each day with passion and curiosity – she traveled to nineteen different countries, completed marathons and triathlons, left her corporate job and joined the Peace Corps. Christy also pursued her passion for writing and teaching: she earned an...
read moreVolunteering and Happiness
On August 2, as part of a three person panel, I had the occasion to discuss learning accommodations available to traumatic brain injury survivors on “Another Fork in the Road,” a broadcast of the weekly Brain Injury Radio Network, hosted by Donna O’Donnell Figurski. Juliet Madsen, a retired military veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, sustained a TBI in 2004 while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Both she and I discussed post-TBI issues such as indecisiveness, poor attention span, the inability to remember names, and the need to rely...
read moreHow To Be Your Own Best Editor
Are you a writer who is wondering how to tackle editing your manuscript? As I edit my memoir, I think about the tips Ann Hood shared at the Muse and Marketplace last May in her workshop, “How To Be Your Own Best Editor.” I left the workshop with pages of a notebook filled with her savory tidbits, and re-read them again and again when I’m stuck. Here they are: First, you need to develop writing habits that you can keep. And don’t allow anything to interfere with your writing time. If need be, Ann suggested finding a writer friend who is...
read moreThe Pain Scale
Where do you rate your migraine, back pain, abdominal pain? A two, a five, a ten? A few weeks ago I went to see my physical therapist for hip pain. “On a scale of zero to ten, ten sending you to the emergency room, how bad is your pain?” she asked. Pain is universal, and, like most of us, I’ve been asked to choose a number from the pain scale time and again: in the weeks and months after my pelvis, foot, ribs, and lower back fractured in a car accident, when my bowel got all tied up in a knot, and when a cyst on my ovary ruptured. In 1999,...
read moreWhat is Orthorexia Nervosa?
You’ve heard of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia, right? Anorexics restrict their eating whereas Bulimics go through cycles of binge eating followed by purging. But what is Orthorexia Nervosa? An eating disorder currently not recognized in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Orthorexia was first coined in 1996 by a physician who used it to describe patients who were overly concerned with their health. Orthorexia, which literally translates into “fixation on righteous eating,” begins with one’s attempt to eat healthy foods. But...
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